Writing Ink Quotes & Sayings

A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas. — Jean De La Bruyere

I write into an old book that smells of dust and whose pages are floppy with damp. Sometimes the ink splodges onto the paper, other times it will barely leave the nib of my pen. — Fennel Hudson

I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first attempt I have ever made & yet I perceive I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use ... The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper. — Mark Twain

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol. — Alexandre Dumas

When the ink runs dry, you're most likely writing at the wrong angle. — Carolyn Shields

Make sure to immediately write down any impressions you receive. Intuitive impressions are often subtle and therefore 'evaporate' very quickly, so make sure to capture them in writing as soon as possible. Recent research in neuroscience indicates that an intuitive insight - or any new idea - not captured within 37 seconds is likely never to be recalled again. In 7 minutes, it's gone forever. As my buddy Mark Victor Hansen likes to say, 'As soon as you think it, ink it!' — Jack Canfield

Inking is meditation in liquid form... — J.H. Everett

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago. — C.S. Lewis

A sense of mission lost
in ink's
jagged outcrops.
I was trying to tell myself
what I must have known
before
in a form
I wouldn't recognize at first. — Rae Armantrout

If the boy who draws
lets you look over his shoulder.
If the poet
smiles
and shows you her words.
If the girl who sings for the shower only,
hums a song
in front of you.
Know that you're no longer a person
but the air
and dust
that fills their lungs.
When the world perishes,
and all things cease to exist,
you'll remain inside an ink stain,
a paint brush,
a song.

Poem N. 8 — Alaska Gold

Okay. Right. Horror meets romance meets erotica meets fantasy meets hip hop. Throw in some leather and some Miami Ink shit, stir with a baseball bat and a tire iron, sprinkle on some baby powder, and serve over a hot bed of Holy-Mary-mother-of-God-this-has-to-work-or-I'm-going-to-be-a-lawyer-for-the-rest-of-my-natural-life.
No problem."
(J.R. Ward on the elements of writing the Black Dagger Brotherhood) — J.R. Ward

You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic. — Ellen DeGeneres

It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge? — Anthony Trollope

I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

That evening, Hope wrote a letter to her MP, Jack Crow. She found no difficulty at all in composing it, but quite a bit in writing it. She hadn't hand-written an entire page since primary school. In the end she found an app on her glasses that sampled her handwriting and turned it into a font that looked like her handwriting would if it had been regular, and printed it off. There was even an app for the printer that indented the paper a little, and an ink that looked like ballpoint ink. — Ken MacLeod

Take any writer you want in the 19th century: they wrote with quill pens, dipping a piece of goose feather in ink and writing. And yet we read those novels today, and if we're sensitive to them, we respond to them with an immediacy that is stronger than anything written today on a word processor. — Walter Murch

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site. — Holly Bourne

I am the Penitent God. And tonight, I have begun my battle. My siege. The hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen, to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture. My campaign for my friend's very soul. My war of Ice, Ink, and Ember. — S.G. Night

All writers pen sad stories to garner sympathy, writing is after all for the abandoned of the society: the ink-leech, spewing black blood and sucking innocent souls. — Aporva Kala

I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper. — Paul Auster

Look- here's a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. [ ... ] On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. [ ... ] The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room ... except we are together. We are close. We're having a meeting of the minds. [ ... ] We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. — Stephen King

The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink. — Rachel L. Schade

The darkness has ink eyes, and if you stare long enough, you're going to see it blink black. That's the moment to start writing. — Jarod Kintz

And so many of the indies have partnered with Google to sell ebooks right from their own websites. These stores are embracing the "new technology" instead of hiding from it, because they realize it's about the story, not the ink on paper. If you want ebooks, your local indie can sell you ebooks. If your local independent is hanging up posters saying that ebooks will kill everything, you should tag that bookstore as a favorite in your GPS doohickey. You'll get great deals, because that store will have a going-out-of-business sale soon. Yes, even though you try to save it with a letter-writing campaign. — Steve Weddle

I have often believed the pen to be a needle, and ink to be a thread. Each story is an intricately woven tapestry and with each word I invariably sew a piece of myself into the page. — Shaun Hick

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age since Pentecost. — Leonard Ravenhill

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines. — Erin Morgenstern

You hid in my ink and guided my hand. You stained the pages with your silence as God wrote the words, "Be still." Yet, my heart's blindness could only write in loud hues of red, "I love you. — Shannon L. Alder

We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationary. — Charles Dickens

Don't expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood. — Leslie Gordon Barnard

Emma thought of Julian, sitting here, in this office. Year after year, from the time he was twelve and all scraped elbows and torn jeans. He would sit patiently with pen and ink, writing his letter to the Clave, petitioning them to let his sister Helen come home from Wrangel Island. — Cassandra Clare

I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants; cant's into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don't just think it - ink it! — Michael Korda

I take pride in using fountain pens. They represent craftsmanship and a love of writing. Biros, on the other hand, represent the throwaway culture of modern society, which exists on microwave ready-meals and instant coffee. — Fennel Hudson

In India ink your writing is lovely, but not as lovely as your hand - it is your hand - I know your hand - it fits so well in mine ... — John Geddes

Getting ink felt right, like it would help her put her life in order, to move forwards. It was her body, despite the things that'd been done to it, and she wanted to claim it, to own it, to prove that to herself. She knew it wasn't magic, but the idea of writing her own identity felt like the closest she could get to reclaiming her life. Sometimes there's power in the act; sometimes there's strength in words. She wanted to find an image that represented those things she was feeling, to etch it on her skin as tangible proof of her decision to change. — Melissa Marr

From the foot of the pyramids I contemplate twenty centuries, buried in the sand ... I came here to hold on to fleeting life, and I see all about me only death ... I write this, not quite knowing what I'm saying, but I dry the ink with the dust of Egyptian queens. — Rachel

Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares. — Charles Yu

I am no longer a writer. Just an emotion. An emotion that is unable to stay within its own body, and is therefore, trying to make its way into yours. — Zaeema J. Hussain

Proper writing ink comes in a bottle, can be swirled like brandy in a glass, and smells like apple blossom after rain. — Fennel Hudson

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book. — Friedrich Nietzsche

May the ink of your thoughts never dry. — Joanie Schirm

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing. — Virginia Woolf

Where are those tears in your eyes, my child?
How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing!
You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing-
is that why they call you dirty?
O, fie! Would they dare to call the full moon dirty because
it has smudged its face with ink?
For every little trifle they blame you, my child. They are
ready to find fault for nothing.
You tore your clothes while playing-is that why they call you
untidy?
O, fie! What would they call an autumn morning that smiles
through its ragged clouds?
Take no heed of what they say to you, my child.
They make a long list of your misdeeds.
Everybody knows how you love sweet things-is that why they
call you greedy?
O, fie! What then would they call us who love you? — Rabindranath Tagore

Ink, thinks Jacob, you most fecund of liquids... — David Mitchell

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold. — Horace Walpole

Never durst a poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink was tempered with love's sighs. — William Shakespeare

I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader. — Taylor Mali

Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit. — Guru Nanak

Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. — William Shakespeare

To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them. — Henry Fielding

And if all the trees on earth were pens and the ocean [were ink], with seven
oceans behind it to add to its [supply], yet would not the words of Allah be
exhausted [in the writing]: for Allah is Exalted in Power, full of Wisdom. — Anonymous

If I could sleep with my arms around you, the ink could stay in the bottle. — Shelly King

She has a bookshelf for a heart, and ink runs through her veins, she'll write you into her story with the typewriter in her brain. Her bookshelf's getting crowded. With all the stories that's she's penned, of all the people who flicked through her pages but closed the book before it ended. And there's one pushed to the very back, that sits collecting dust, with its title in her finest writing, 'The One's Who Lost My Trust'. There's books shes scared to open, and books she doesn't close. Stories of every person she's met stretched out in endless rows. Some people have only one sentence while others once held a main part, thousands of inky footprints that they've left across her heart. You might wonder why she does this, why write of people she once knew? But she hopes one day she'll mean enough for someone to write about her too. — E.H.

Ink to parchment, words to paper, glory to Beatrice. — Dante Alighieri

I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen. — Kevin Spacey

For almost a quarter of a century, Teen Ink has been encouraging young people to write - and then has published those pieces. These heartfelt essays and poems explore the issues faced by teenagers today. I applaud their efforts because they not only help young people deal with their own lives but also encourage the budding authors of the next generation. — Anita Silvey

He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. — John Ray

Water is the ink that writes the poetry of life. — Alexandra Cousteau

I could always hold a melody, but I was never like, I'm going to be a singer. So I'm able to use that when I write. I'm actually playing the beat with my voice. Instead of thinking about coming up with melodies, it's like filling in the instruments. So sometimes it's better to have beats with less melodies in them, because then I can play more with my vocals. — Kid Ink

[Hannah:] Here is to Rylie Cates: May your pens never run out of ink, your computer never run out of power, and your brain never run out of brilliant ideas. — Jessica Lave

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night. — Amy Lowell

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it. — Margaret Atwood

When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there's this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing. — David Mitchell

To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world. — Julia Quinn

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven's feather ... I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill — Kate Forsyth

I am a creator, writing like the wind, I carry the weight of a future world in the barrel of a pen, etching my characters into the paper with life giving ink so my dreams and reality might finally meet. — L.M. Fields

Don't think it, ink it. — Mark Victor Hansen

Even the pool of ink could be dried out and writing papers could be burnt to ashes forever but the spoken word will never die so as the editor. — Euginia Herlihy

You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink. — G.K. Chesterton

Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.) — Hilary Mantel

Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own? — Alexander Pope

What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are all the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people write. We write to escape our prisons. — Alice Weaver Flaherty

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant. — Aberjhani

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! — Hilary Mantel

History that is presented only as ink-embalmed data is as a flower pressed in a book. Although the dry petals still hold all the elements of the original flower, they cannot show us how it looked blooming in the field. The color and fragrance - the true reality - or the flowers are gone. — Rex Alan Smith

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink. — Georges Simenon

I knew all too well the damage of scarlet ink smeared across page-after-page ... — Jazz Feylynn

The ink in your pen never reshapes your thoughts, you must replace the ink before the ink can be inked properly. — Michael Bassey Johnson

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after. — Janet Fitch

Pencil in your plans but write your visions in ink — Andy Stanley

If the ink of my writing morphed into ants, would they march along with my thoughts? Would they find my work as enjoyable as a picnic? If the answer is no, I wouldn't hesitate to stomp all over my writing. — Jarod Kintz

If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message. — Fennel Hudson

I love working with my hands. My writing is rough, my paper bruised with ink stains. — Bauvard

One day you will tell me how to change what I cannot yet describe without my words swelling HUGE, vowels vanishing, tears washing ink away. — Alasdair Gray

Writing is daydreaming with ink. — Liana Brooks

Provide me with ink and paper and I will write. — Edmund Campion

The tears had turned to ink ... — Dawna Markova

I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,
As seas of ink I spatter.
Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins
The other kind don't matter. — Robert W. Service

The life these words speak of is not worth the ink they are written in ... He now knows that the only words worth writing down arise when language is impossible. — Andrei Makine

Say (O Muhammad SAW to Mankind) If the sea were ink for (writing) the Words of my Lord, surely, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord would be finished, even if we brought (another sea) like it for its aid. — Anonymous

The writing is definitely on the wall and no matter how pretty the ink looks, it will still bleed through and stain the layers beneath permanently. — K. Bromberg

Writing a NYT bestseller was a delightful experience. But there are many books which are read by few that should be read and reread by many, as well as books bought by many that are hardly worth the ink. — Ron Brackin

A lot of ink is given over to mythologizing female friendships as curious, fragile relationships that are always intensely fraught. Stop reading writing that encourages this mythology. — Roxane Gay

One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, 'This end is more important than the other.' After twenty years I learned to write directly in ink. — John Cage

I work with pen and paper. That's my favorite way to write. I love the way the ink sinks into the wood, soaks into the wood pulp. There's something about that process that's so organic. — Tom Robbins

What you think and how you think, influences what you ink and how you ink. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

I'm Writing my stoy. But i'm also plotting my escape from this prison cell.

This is my plan.
I will do it with words.
I will write them by day.
I will write them by night.
I will write them on the walls,
the stalls, the halls.
I will write them in big bold ink
on posters i hang on the concrete blocks.
I will write them on little pieces of paper
I stuff on the mattress and the pillow.
I will write them with fingers
bent and cramped from use.
I will write them in blood
if i have to,
but only my own.
And i will keep writing them,
again, and again, and again,
until i fill this prison cell so full of words,
that the bars bend and buckle and burst
because they cannot contain them
And then
I will
be free. — Carolee Dean

Her feelings as dark as the night sky, the moon was the only thing making her come alive
So she got some paper and pen to let the ink spill it all out because talking never seemed to work.
Blood drops fell on her little piece of paper, drowning it along with her. By the time the blood dried up it left her with nothing but red dust. Red. The same color her eyes were captivated by.
They never told her that there is no way to get over crazy, messy things in life. There's only crossing that red sea as if you're walking through the wilderniss. The sun will rise when you've gone through the depts of it all. Writing wont matter anymore. Don't you understand? You're life is not messy little girl, you're just crazy sometimes. — N